The View from the Back of the Bike

All Boys Are Not Created Equal

On our last weekend ride, F and I headed west on M-50 to the small town of Tecumseh. It’s a very tidy little place that clearly had some money back when it was being established — lots of big, old houses that sit back from the main drag, buffered by manicured green lawns. And an inordinate number of cupolas. Like seriously, almost every one of those big, stately houses had one….

…aaaand I just fell down the Google rabbit hole for a bit, because I wanted to find out if I was using the word “cupola” correctly to describe the square, windowed things on these roofs. Turns out that what these houses boasted was a specific type of cupola called a belvedere.

But I still don’t know why they were so prevalent in this small town. Or why two other things appeared prevalent in the history of this small town:

Mass murderers — Andrew Kehoe, who killed 38 children and 6 adults, and injured at least 58 others when he blew up a school in 1927 in the Bath School Disaster, was from Tecumseh. And Henry Lee Lucas kicked off his killing spree in Tecumseh in 1960 when he murdered his mother there.

But I digress. Bigtime. (Thanks, internet.) What I do know is that Tecumseh has one of the friendliest, busiest Big Boys we’ve seen on our travels. We were glad to see the place hopping, including a few other motorcyclists, and breakfast was great.

Even this guy was extra friendly.

Later that week, F texted me a picture when he stopped in at the Big Boy in Imlay City where we’d stopped the day we got the Concours. “Huh,” I said when I saw it. “This Boy… he looks a little devious. How is that possible?”

Would you buy a burger from this guy?

And then it hit me: the eyebrows. I hadn’t realized that the Big Boy statues themselves could be different from each other — but clearly Imlay City Big Boy was in need of some manscaping.

So now I’m curious. Why do restaurants in the same chain have different statues? How many different Big Boys are out there? Where/how do you get one of these things? Why had I never noticed Big Boy’s male pattern balding before? And is there really a Big Boy Graveyard in Northern Michigan??

I clearly need to conduct more research. Which means more breakfasts at more Big Boys. Which means more time two up on the bike. Oh, the sacrifices we make…